You would think that a working class in such dire straits would naturally gravitate toward a socialist presidential candidate offering the chance for real structural reform instead of the inflammatory bigotry of a faux-populist business man running interference for the plutocracy (Trump: 'the minimum wage is already too high'). The key to understanding the disconnect between Bernie Sanders and poor white workers is its historical context as thoroughly explained by Theodore W. Allen in his Invention of the White Race. to combat any natural class solidarity between slaves and poor working whites, plutocrats embedded white workers (often bond servants themselves) with a sense of inbred superiority using a combination of legal and social policy preferences as well as racist propaganda. A similar technique was successfully employed previously in Ireland by British overlords to suppress Irish Catholics' campaign for Ireland's separation by giving preferential treatment in industrial employment and landowning to Irish Protestants to engender their loyalty to the Crown Of England.